| Subject: Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi! - Part 16/25 |
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Teacup
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Date Posted: 07:41:34 07/16/07 Mon
In reply to:
Teacup (aka Ever-Xmas)
's message, "Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi!" on 23:51:19 06/30/07 Sat
Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi!
Previously:
“Harriet’s pregnant. … She just found out today,” Mac informed him. She had known Harm hadn’t made it to the Roberts’ house in time to hear the official announcement, but she would have thought someone would have mentioned it to Harm later.
Harm’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Yep.”
He smiled. “That is good news. … But you dodged the question.”
“What was the question?”
“You want a baby of your own, don’t you?”
----
Part 16
Mac looked a little embarrassed. “You know I do … when the time and circumstances are right.”
Harm swallowed hard before venturing, “About a year and a half?”
Mac stiffened. Harm hadn’t forgotten their deal. “… Maybe,” she said with caution, “… if things seem right, … and you’re still willing to keep your promise.”
Harm met her eyes and assured her, “I’m not going to back down.”
“We’ll see,” she softly said, turning her eyes back to the flames. She had heard the nervousness in Harm’s voice. She wouldn’t allow herself to get her hopes up too much.
“Unless you’re in another relationship by then,” Harm added, voicing his own concern.
Mac countered, “Or you are.”
“That’s doubtful,” said Harm.
There was a long period of silence.
“You ever really think about it?” asked Mac finally.
“Our deal?”
Mac shrugged. “Having kids. Wondering what it’ll be like. Wondering what they’ll be like.”
“Troublemakers, I’m sure,” Harm half-joked.
“Mmm,” Mac agreed and teased, “… just like their daddy.”
“I don’t know,” said Harm, “some of them might take after their mommy.”
Mac didn’t want to say it, but she did. “You don’t know who she’s going to be yet, … so you can’t say what she’s like.”
“I might know what she’s like now,” said Harm with a soft look at Mac. “… But I guess we’ll see in a year and a half.”
Mac was at a complete loss for words. He really was serious about considering her to mother his children.
Recovering from that, Mac finally took offense to his earlier comment about the kids taking after their mother. “Are you calling me a troublemaker?”
“You called me one,” Harm pointed out.
“You are one,” said Mac. “But are you implying that I am as well?”
“If the combat boot fits,” he joked.
“I prefer comfortable shoes,” she volleyed back.
“I know. … Lots of them. … And I’m sure at least one pair is called ‘trouble.’”
Mac faced him head on. “The only time I step in ‘trouble,’ is when I’m following after you.”
“Not true,” he disagreed.
“Is so.”
“Is not.”
Mac laughed. “We’d better stop acting like children before we have any of our own.”
Harm laughed too. “Well, one thing is for sure,” he noted, “… any kid of either one of us is going to have a terrible stubborn streak.” He leaned closer to Mac and put his forehead against hers for just a moment.
“You’re right,” Mac acknowledged. “God help us if we do have a child together and he or she gets it from both sides.” Jokingly, she said, “Maybe I’d better reconsider this deal.”
Harm’s heart stopped for a second. “You wouldn’t, would you? … Back out on this?”
Mac saw the alarmed look on Harm’s face. “No,” she said seriously, “I wouldn’t.”
“Good.” Harm was obviously relieved. He tried to cover how important the deal was to him, by adding, “… I’d hate to think you wouldn’t keep a promise.”
“I’m a woman of my word,” Mac assured him. She was still confused by Harm’s panic though. “But don’t be so concerned about me.” She shifted her eyes to stare at the fire again as she sadly checked, “This is just a back up plan, right?”
Harm almost gave in to his cowardice at that moment and agreed. But something else took hold of him. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said.
That gave Mac hope, but she wasn’t sure she could believe in a future for them. “Wouldn’t you rather be swept off your feet in love?” she asked. “Don’t you want to get married and have those kids with a woman who you love as completely as she loves you?”
“That would be ideal,” he admitted, hoping that someday Mac might be as much in love with him as he was with her.
Mac didn’t hear that in his answer, however. She assumed he wasn’t in love with her, … at least not completely. So obviously, if he wanted that kind of love, he was still waiting for someone else. Even with her own disappointment, she tried to bolster his hopes.
“It could still happen,” she told him. “Fate might intervene within the next year and a half and provide you with the perfect someone.”
Harm didn’t answer. Fate had already provided him the perfect someone, if only he could make her his. He wasn’t sure how to do that, but he couldn’t give up on that dream.
“How do you see them?” he suddenly asked.
“What?”
“Ou’ …” Harm corrected himself from saying ‘our,’ and restarted with, “Your kids. … How do you imagine them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on,” he encouraged her. “If you were to have … a little girl, … what would she look like? How do you see her?”
Mac smiled at that thought. “She’d be cute.”
He grinned. “You want to elaborate on that a bit?”
Mac hesitated, so Harm prompted her some more. “How about Christmas morning, … what’s she doing?”
Mac put her head back against Harm’s arm and let herself imagine. “She gets up early, and comes in to wake u’” Mac almost said ‘us,’ but caught herself. “uh, … me up to go to the Christmas tree where the presents are piled up. … She’s dressed in cute little PJs.”
Harm interrupted, “No cowboys until she’s older, I hope.”
Mac rolled her eyes, but otherwise ignored his comment. “She’s got light brown hair with just a few wavy curls, she has beautiful bluish eyes, and her cheeks are a little rosy from excitement. … She runs downstairs, picks up one of her presents and then sits on her knees with the gift in her lap, waiting patiently, … but with the most charming little grin.”
Mac stopped, leaving Harm to wonder, “So, what’s her present?”
“I don’t know,” answered Mac, “but it’s your turn now.”
“My turn?”
“Tell me,” Mac insisted, “what kind of girl would you have?”
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “… I like the one you described.”
“That’s cheating,” Mac accused, thinking he was trying to get out of sharing his own imaginings.
“I can’t help it that we think alike,” he protested.
“Fine,” Mac conceded. She did like the idea that they might be thinking alike. But she wasn’t letting him off the hook either. “Then tell me what you’d get your daughter for Christmas.”
Harm let out a small laugh. “Whatever she wanted, probably.”
“And what would that be?” Mac prompted.
Harm thought about it for a few moments, before deciding, “A trip to the zoo.”
“Really?” Mac had been expecting something more … able to fit in a box.
“Yeah. … I think she’d love all the furry and cute animals, … the pandas, the little seal pups. … But at the same time I think she’d be fascinated by the fiercer animals, … like the crocodiles stealthily lying in wait. … She’d spot them, despite their green camouflage. And even though she would know they were dangerous, and she would be a little scared, she wouldn’t show her fear. She wouldn’t consider herself any more vulnerable than the crocodile.”
“A brave little girl,” Mac interpreted.
“Yeah. And smart,” Harm added. “I think she’d love those exhibits where they show the structures of the animals, … you know, with the bones and all?”
“Yeah, I love those,” answered Mac.
“I know you do,” Harm told her in a way that made Mac’s heart skip a beat.
“… So, you’d give her an experience,” Mac refocused on the child. “… Some quality time with her dad as opposed to a thing she could hold onto and play with?”
“I think quality time is the most valuable thing parents can give their child.”
Mac was aware that Harm had missed that with his dad. Those memories he did have of the time spent with his father, he clung to. And Mac knew that what Harm had said about what was most valuable from a parent was true.
Looking back, she’d trade any amount of toys to have had time spent with her parents during which they showed her that they loved her; … but that was not to have been. Her mother and father did not have much in the way of parenting abilities. But Harm, on the other hand, … he had great potential for fatherhood. This kind of thinking proved it.
“You’re full of wisdom tonight,” Mac told Harm in earnest. “… You’re gonna make a great dad.”
“We’ll see,” said Harm, not quite as convinced. “Anyway, I’d get her stuff to play with too. Like, I’d imagine she’d want to stop at the zoo’s gift shop.”
“Stuffed animals to take home?” asked Mac.
“Probably, … among other things.”
“So, a soft, fuzzy panda bear for Christmas?”
“Maybe, … but I think she’d want a hippo.”
“A hippopotamus?” Mac asked with surprise. “Why, of all the animals, would she want a hippopotamus?”
Harm shrugged. “Hippos are fun. … And I think they’d remind her of her father.”
Now Mac laughed. “You’re calling yourself a hippo? … Please, let me hear your explanation for this.”
“Well, they’re big,” he explained, “… and to a very little girl, I’d be big.”
“You’re tall, not fat,” said Mac. “Why not a giraffe?”
“I don’t have a stretched out neck,” he dismissed the idea and continued on. “Hippos are not meat eaters, though they live among them.”
“Is your daughter going to practically be a vegetarian, like you?”
“No,” he quickly answered, “her mother is going to corrupt her.”
Mac wasn’t sure if that referred to her or some fictional mother. She decided to let it go and stay focused on the child. “So, she’s going to like hippos because they’re big and don’t eat meat, like you?”
“Yeah,” Harm answered. “… and hippos have funny ears.”
“You don’t have funny ears,” Mac told him.
“I’ve got a crooked one.”
“Yeah, but it’s cute.”
Harm smiled, hearing that Mac thought his bent ear was cute. He didn’t tell people, but he was a little self conscious about it. “Hippos have cute ears too.”
Mac chuckled at the preposterous thought of Harm having anything in common with such an animal. “Harm, the happy, hippo hero. That’s what your daughter’s going to want for Christmas?”
“Yep.”
“Not a crocodile?” Mac checked. “… You said she’d be intrigued by them.”
“No crocodiles!” Harm objected. “… I said she’d be fascinated by them, not that she would enjoy them. … And no rhinoceri or anything else either.”
“Rhinoceri?”
“Isn’t that the plural of rhinoceros?”
“Not the widely accepted version,” said Mac.
“Fine, no rhinoceroses-es either,” Harm insisted playfully. “She’d want a hippo. Hippos are happy, healthy, and lovable.”
“Hippos don’t fly,” Mac pointed out.
“No, but they do spend a lot of time in and on the water, … and they can snap one of those threatening crocodiles in half if the need ever arises.”
“Just like her daddy would protect her from those nasty monsters,” Mac interpreted the significance of that fact.
“Absolutely,” Harm stated. “Or from any other kind of monster. … Plus, … I don’t think my daughter will associate me with flying too much.”
That last comment was very interesting. But although she was curious, Mac did not follow up on it.
“Okay, your turn,” Harm told Mac.
“No, I started last time,” she said. “I want to hear what you think a boy of yours would be like.”
--
TBC ...
--
A/N: So, personally, I loved this part. What did you think about it?
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